The BIG feature of the garden was the pond.

We knew the pond had been neglected by the previous owners of the house and had been told there was no life other than an abundance of lily.

The plan was to cut down the ponds size and turn it into a wildlife pond and hopefully attract some frogs and newts. A problem soon arose, the pond was not empty. It already had fish, frogs and newts living in it!

The New Pond, with Adam trying to help dig.

Plan B

So plan B came into action. Build a smaller pond opposite the big one for our wildlife and worry about filling in the old one when done.

After some time the new pond was finished and we could drain the old and transfer the few fish and frogs into the new pond.

Surprise number two then came up. In the pond were over 80 tench, 30 newts and I stopped counting the frogs at 50. New pond was going to be a little small for all those fish, let alone the rest of the wildlife!

Plan C

So Plan C began. The old pond would once again be shrunk to less than half its size and the tench would go back to live in there and hopefully we could persuade the frogs and newts with the right environment to live in the new one. Still had too many fish, so we managed to persuade my brother (Thanks bro’) to take some for his pond (20 – 30). Over the winter and with the help of a hungry magpie when the fish were moved into the now down sized pond there was just over 30 of them.

They are now happily enjoying life in their new filtered home that is complete with running water. I didn’t think a fish could look happy but they do. The tench are a boring brown green and difficult to see when swimming near the bottom so we have added some colour; Koi, Goldfish, Shubunkin and Orfe.